DevBlog

Speaking a conferences is a very time consuming prospect. You need to put great effort into the material to ensure it matches the expectations of the audience. Code needs to be tested. And then there are the practice sessions, preferable in front of a live audience.

But conference preparation starts long before any of that. You need to first come up with several topics because conference organizers generally ask potential speakers for more than one topic. A catchy title helps. Several years ago, I had one called "OOP, I Did it Again", that was an introduction to Object Oriented Programming. You then have to come up with a description, bullet points that hit the highlights of the presentation, figure out if it's a 100, 200, 300, or 400 level talk, and what pre-requisites are needed. Then, you need to put your proposal into the format needed by the conference organizers. So, by the time you've done this for three or four topics, you have easily spent several hours.

For the past three years, I've done this for Southwest Fox, but have not been accepted as a speaker there. So, I've decided to no longer submit proposals for the conference. I have no doubt there will be great presentations and it will be a fantastic conference, but it's no longer an effective use of my time.

I probably won't be there as an attendee either. My company has no training budget this year and it really is cost prohibitive for me to foot the bill myself.

I wish the Rick, Doug, and Tamar all the best for this year?s Southwest Fox and for many years to come.

// posted by Craig Berntson @ 8:43:00 AM